Fool. Did you honestly believe that the host body for the fourteenth could be without Sin? You didn't bring salvation to all those souls; it was the left hand of God!

There is something profoundly eerie about waking up, in the middle of the night, just when a thunderstorm is starting to break down on the unsuspecting world, to the face of a man standing just a few inches away from one's nose. Believe me, I know. My body jerked away in an instinctive motion and I managed to silence the scream that threatened to escape from my mouth. The stiffing of my muscles managed to make me avoid kicking Link to the other side of the room, but I still almost hit him with my leg. With careful movements, so that he wouldn't wake the other up, I disentangled my feet from the sheets and climbed back up to my bed. The thunders sounded again and a flash of light briefly illuminated the room, allowing me to once more confirm that, whatever fashion sense Link possessed, it definitely didn't apply to eyebrows.

I was tired. Burned up, used. I hadn't had a good night's sleep in weeks. Well, except for the two days I spent unconscious after that mess with Phantom Thief G. Things really took a turn for the worse when the Earl decided it was a good idea to seal off my power to control the Ark and then unleash a battalion of Akuma inside a warded building with a lot of children inside; Which just goes to show exactly how much of a jerk the Earl of the Millennium really is.

The Earl of the Millennium. No one really knows exactly who, or what, he is. A thousand years old spirit, the Devil, whatever, if you see this guy you don't listen to a word he says. You turn the other way and run like hell before he has the chance to talk you into sacrificing the everlasting soul of your most important person and give your body up to be used by the Akuma he just created. I met him the first time right after my foster father died. He suddenly appeared out of nowhere and asked me if I would like to see Mana Walker again. I was just a kid and I'd just lost the only person who'd ever cared about me. I didn't know any better; I said yes. I called Mana's name in earnest and that summoning brought his soul back from the Other Side and trapped him inside a dummy the Earl creates for that purpose. The dummy then kills whoever called its soul and takes his body, infiltrating the society. Mana didn't do it the right way. Oh, he tried to kill me when the Earl commanded it – no Akuma can deny him anything; they're slaves to his will, regardless of the wishes of the imprisoned soul. But he cursed me first, his bladed arms cut into my left eye and the time and pain (and fear) it took for that to happen was enough to awaken something in me. My left arm, which had been shrivelled and blackened, with a sick colour of dried blood my entire life, changed, becoming a white metallic claw which destroyed Mana's Akuma body before he had the time to act accordingly to his master's orders. The Earl just slipped away, back to wherever he came from. He doesn't usually linger if he can leave the dirty work to his toys. I survived. My hair turned white from the chock of killing my most important person. I was found by my Master, Cross Marian. He explained that my hand wasn't just some horrible limb that had come to my body by chance or for the amusement of some twisted mind. It was a holy power called Innocence which was the only way to counter the Earl's machines. I lived as his apprentice for the following years. Learning to use my powers, my Innocence, to destroy the Earl's minions and, who knows, maybe help stop him once and for all. Then, one day, he just told me to make my way to the Dark Order's headquarters, hit me with a hammer on the head and left before I regained my consciousness. Typical of Master.

The storm rumbled again. There was little chance of me managing to get back to sleep so I might as well do something productive with my spare time. I silently got up and started to dress in the same fashion. Living as a student to General Cross grants you that ability. When I was younger, Master used to through every little thing he had within his reach (chairs, hammers, and all that) whenever I woke him up from his slumber. He had a light sleep, something I'd also earned after a few years as an Exorcist and learned to identify as a defence mechanism: You don't fall into deep sleep when there's a chance of someone murdering you while you're out of it. The Earl doesn't use only Akuma to do his jobs. The slightest noise would wake him up. After a few bumps in the head, doing things completely silent becomes natural.

I got to the door right as Link let out a light snore. I opened the door – barely enough to slip through, so it wouldn't creak – and got out, closing it after me.

Link is my overseer, here in the Order, and self-appointed caretaker. He takes his job very seriously, which is way he insists on sleeping in my room every night. I tried to explain to him just exactly how much such situation inconveniences me, how awkward it is to me, but it was to no avail. He keeps insisting on it. Most of the times I manage to get inside and lock the door before he manages to follow, leaving him pounding on the door, threatening to call Inspector Revellier. It's a bluff, of course. I never open and he's yet to call the inspector. Tonight things hadn't gone the way I'd expected. And it was all Lavi's fault. He'd been harassing me about this new nickname he'd gotten for Link (something along the lines of "spots"). Lavi's voice has a droning quality that seeps into your mind and can pretty much keep you from doing anything, if you're not careful. It must come with the job, although, now that I think about it, Bookman's technique is much more refined. I swear the old man's voice can be like a Komrin II running havoc in your head, wiping it clean of everything he doesn't want to be there. Given the tendency I seem to have for rambling inside my head, I'd probably stand to gain if I was to expose myself more to Bookman's lectures. Therapy for the unruly mind an all that. Anyway, contrary to norm, Link didn't rise to the bait and, instead of trying to beat Lavi for the new nickname, used the distraction to slip past my defences and get inside the room. And what's worse, when I turned around to censure Lavi for condemning to a night of unsettlement, the little bastard had already disappeared. Which kind of makes me think they were working together in this little ploy.

My boots where the only thing to be heard while I walked the corridors of the church. The Black Order was never, in its entirety, asleep, but the dwelling levels of the building could become markedly empty during the night. The lower levels of the basement, where the Science Bureau had its quarters, or the Entrance floors were always being patrolled by guards and Finders, keeping strangers from coming in. And of course there were the golems keeping watch around the perimeter. But we were Exorcists, the blood of the Order and we were left more or less to our own devices. It wasn't as if one of us would be working for the Earl.

Well… at least that was how it was for everyone else. I knew I wasn't all that trusted by the majority of the Black Order. My comrades, people I'd fought alongside, protected (and got protected by) from danger, trusted me, of course. But those were just a handful, and most of them were Exorcists. No one said it but the reason Link guarded me was known to everyone. It wasn't to protect me so much as to protect others from me. Although I can't say I have much faith in his abilities, when he fails to wake up after I fall from my bed almost on top of him. Why protect others from me? Because I have the "memories" of the Fourteenth seeding inside of me.

About half a year ago I'd been sent on a mission along with Lavi, Bookman and Lenalee, to find my old master General Cross Marian. The Earl had apparently upped the stakes and started to kill the generals, the most powerful Exorcists in the Black Order. And he'd gotten his most powerful pawns thrown into the game as well: the Noah Family. Super-humans with incredible resilience, I'd seen a building fall on top of one of them and he'd come out of it without a scratch. His clothes hadn't even been inconvenienced by the debris. On top of that, each of them had special abilities: Tykki could choose what he wanted to touch – be it air, walls or even organs. He could just slip his hand into your chest and take out your heart without even a droplet of blood -, another Noah, Road, could move into another dimension and entrap people there, and another one, Lust, could shape shift at will into anything she desired. Just to name a few. And they all had the power to destroy Innocence. There are a total of thirteen of them – or so we'd thought. During our mission, we learned that my master had been shadowing the Earl and the Noah in order to learn the location of the fabled Ark. Not only he'd managed that, but he had also appeared to have infiltrated the very Ark and had been working out a way to gain control of it and, hopefully the Egg, a device which the Earl apparently uses to create Akuma. But we also learned something else. Our pursuit of Master leaded us to Japan, where things went downhill real fast. We were trapped inside the Ark and to make things worse we were informed by an overjoyed Tykki that the thing was pretty much falling apart and would be destroyed in a few hours.

In those desperate times I managed to awaken the full potential of my Innocence, the Sword of Exorcism. It's supposed to exorcise the evil inside a person – say like a Noah – but instead, when I used it on Tykki, it'd released the full power of his heritage and made him loose control over the Noah that inhabited him. We'd be screwed if my Master hadn't appeared. He beat Tykki with insulting ease and even chatted with the Earl as if the room around us wasn't falling apart – it was. When everything seemed lost he made Tim, my golem, lead me to a hidden room in the Ark with a piano. I played it, gained control of the Ark, saved everybody, and we all went back home victorious. And with both the Egg and the Vessel. But there had been more. You see merely playing the piano wouldn't enable one to control the Ark. For one to be able to do that, one would have to have the Power of the Musician. It wasn't until afterwards, back in the Order, that I finally learned what exactly that meant.

There was another member of the House of Noah, appropriately called the Fourteenth, who had turned against the Earl and tried to destroy him. He was the one with the power to control the Ark, something he did with music, earning him the title of "The Musician". That much seemed to be sort of nice. What wasn't nice was to learn that he'd been Mana's brother and, before the Earl murdered him, had managed to pass his "memories" into an unsuspecting child. Guess who? Once the memories awaken, they start to erode the person they'd been planted into and slowly turn him or her into the Fourteenth. I'd frozen when Master told me that. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? All sort of questions started to pour into my mind: Did Mana know? And if he did, was all the love and care he'd shown me really meant for me, or was it for the sleeping Fourteenth inside me? Even worse was when Master informed me that I'd have to kill those close to me when I turned into the Fourteenth. When. There wasn't even an "if". It was as if Master had already given up hope for me. Then he hugged me. It'd been the first time he'd done something like that to me and it'd been the last as well. He turned up missing, supposed dead, the next night. Of course all suspicions fell upon the "traitor". Inspector Revellier decided that, although he acknowledged the Fourteenth had been against the Earl, there weren't any assurances he'd be on the same side as the Black Order. As such I'd have to be put under constant surveillance. Hence Link.

I passed the stone arcs that marked the entrance to the library. My steps echoed across the empty room as I made my way through the shelves and started searching for my books. These sorts of revelations can keep you up at night. Being my stubborn self, I had decided I would not give in to the Noah inside me and set myself in a crusade to gather as much information as I could, in hopes of finding something, no matter how small, that could help me stand against the incoming tempest.

I took the books to a secluded table. It was my favourite place in the entire library because it stood hidden by the shelves which meant less people would notice me, which meant less staring and whispering.

The hours passed as I browsed through the pages. Somewhere bellow I could hear Chef Jerry, bellowing orders to his subordinates in the kitchen, getting ready for serving breakfast to the Order members.

So far it had all been a wild goose chase. It had been a week since I'd started, and reading most of the entire night really gets you going through the books. I'd searched the entire Old Testament but it all came down to nothing, there was no reference to anything remotely resembling to "Earl of the Millennium". Another puzzling fact: there is a sole reference for "Noah". It tells the story of a great flood and how a guy named Noah was instructed by God about how to build a gigantic ship to gather animals that were to survive the holocaust. The ship was Noah's Ark and with it, Noah sailed the waters safe from arm and eventually released the animals to rebuild the entire planet's population.

Yeah… I got the inconsistencies too.

Obviously there are thirteen too many Noah out there for my liking (well, fourteen, if you want to get technical). Even more apparent, they are not the good guys. Otherwise they wouldn't keep killing people for no reason (although, from some nut jobs I've seen here in the Order, this is a somewhat dubious argument – see Kanda, for example. He believes he's a destroyer).

I remember hearing something about a flood. I think it was Bookman who said it; in one of the rare times he shares some secrets with me (to be fair, Bookman does not share secrets with anyone, to my knowledge). Or maybe it was Lavi, in one of those moments where he sprouts out secret information only Bookmen are supposed to know about (It is rather entertaining to see the ensuing beating by the Old man, if I say so myself). If I remember correctly, Bookman referred to the Flood as the designation "popular" history refers to the three days of darkness, the time of chaos that resulted from the final battle against the Earl – which we apparently lost. But if that is true, then the very foundation of the Church is based on lies and the story of the Old Testament may not have happened in any way like what got registered in the Bible. Which means we've been believing in something that's been wrong all the time. Which means someone, somewhere, stands to gain something out of this whole ordeal. This troubles me, because, so far as I can see, the only one who could benefit from this situation is the very Earl. And if the Church is being lenient on this, it could mean that… well… I don't really want to go there. I don't want to believe that I'm fighting on the wrong side. That might not exist another side at all in this war, that this is not a war… but a game. Where we're pawns to the Earl's play.

My Master had told me to listen to the Fourteenth. That there was another side to this damned war. But how do you trust a guy who is sure to destroy you so that he can take your body? Not to mention the fact that the Fourteenth hadn't been exactly forthcoming when it came to making contact with his 'host'. I mean, I suppose there have been these weird dreams… In fact, the reason I was awake at the moment was exactly that: a dream. I'd been having the same dream over and over again for most of the nights since the mission where we'd recruited Timothy.

It seemed nice enough, the first times I dreamt it. Apart from the pain and blood couching from having my own Sword of Exorcism stuck in me, pinning me against a wall. The entire landscape is one big waste, full of debris from destroyed buildings. These all have a greyish colour to them, which gives me the impression of them being pretty old. The sky is always the same: a red sunset. Then Mana comes along.

The first few nights, I was overjoyed by this fact. I mean, usually when Mana appears in my dreams, he's either dying some horrible death – inflicted by me – or screaming obscenities while trying to murder me. Sometimes I get both alternatives at the same time. But in this dream he's smiling. Real-Happiness smiling! Forget the self-impaling with a broadsword, the dream seemed fantastic. Mana, being the hero I always thought he was, saves me from the pain, extracts me from the sword, and leads child-me into a far away tower of light, with the shape of a crux.

After a few times, though, I started to notice some… Well. I suppose you may call them irregularities.

I've lived with Mana a good portion of my life so I had a good grasping of how he used to react. I don't think there's anyone in the whole world who would have been able to predict Mana's reactions and thoughts as accurately as me.

Mana talks to me, in that dream. Calling me. But, has he does so, he starts altering my name progressively into something I cannot understand.

That's not like Mana. The Mana I knew never called me anything other than 'Allen'. It was important to me, since I spent most of my life as a child being called rude names due to both my defective arm and status as a ragged abandoned child who'd do all kinds of stuff for a bit of food or money. Mana knew that, knew how my past had been harsh. He never talked about it but you could see that he was a person who had taken a lot of beatings from life and kept going through sheer guts and determination. I learned a lot from him. I learnt not to give up. I learnt not to take my frustration from my own situation on other people and to try and make things better for others. I guess that's why I started to work with him as a clown. Laughing does not cure physical illnesses, but it does take good care of a wounded soul. Because of that, he always addressed me as Allen. Maybe I'm just overanalysing things, but that particular aspect of the dream does not sit well with me at all. And then there's the light cross. In some ways it reminds me of the crosses people put on graveyards. A white stylized cross for my own personal funeral. The entire apparition gives of a feeling of wrongness, almost similar to the one one feels when near Dark Matter. To have that strong a feeling in a dream just sets me off. Coupled together, the whole thing feels as if Mana is leading me to an execution – and that pisses me off.

So I started suspecting something larger is at stake here. And I think it has to do with the Noah inside me. I need to know more. To understand just what is going on here.

The sound of footsteps attracts my attention.

Glancing up from my book, I saw what seemed to be a pile of books hovering above the ground. At first, I thought it could be some new invention of Komui's, at which point I prepared to make a smart move and bolt away from the library. You don't mess around with Komui's inventions. The last time he created something to help the Science Department with their paperwork, the entire Black Tower (the building which had served as a HQ for the Order before we moved to England) ended up trashed. Honestly I don't know how the Earl hasn't found our location yet; He just had to listen for the explosions. A closer inspection, however, showed that there was actually a person behind the books. The grunts and the heavy respiration of someone not used to much physical exercise hinted me towards the person's identity.

"Hey there, Johnny." I said, "You're up late… or is it up early?"

Johnny's a good soul. He's one of the few who isn't an exorcist who actually trusts me and accepts me even though he knows about my darker half – so to speak. He is sort of short and has these Bottle-bottom glasses that enlarge his eyes to bug proportions, but he had courage. He once stood up against a Noah, several Skulls, and a cartload of Akuma, just to protect a friend. Unfortunately we exorcists, the 'blood' of the Order, the 'Saviours' of humanity, arrived too late and Tapp died. The Earl's minions turned him into a sand zombie – which we call skulls. Once the transformation was consumed there was no way to turn him back and after we drove the invasion away, the skulls who'd stayed behind turned to dust before our eyes. He was Johnny's best friend. He was my friend as well. They tell me he recovered consciousness just before dying and made some comment about overtime. I smile at the memory.

"Huh?" is the breathless answer I get. I swear these lowly foreign commoners need to learn proper articulation from a true Englishman. Like me. Maybe I can talk Johnny into attending a gentleman's class of conduct taught by me. It would be good payback for those lessons in chess where he regularly beats me into submission with as few as two moves, "Oh. Allen. I hadn't realised there was someone else here." He set the books on my table, deftly moving my own volumes to get enough space for him. Johnny is a bit of a bookworm but I have to hand it to him: no one knows his way across hundreds of thousands of book towers as well as him. He eyed my tomes with a critical eye and turned to me, serious, "Did you find anything?"

Of all the people in the Order I know, Johnny is the only one aware of the project I am conducting. This is not to say I don't trust the others. It's just that, with my current status within the Black Order, it is probably best not to spread what I'm doing too much. With my luck, someone will probably see it as an attempt by the Fourteenth to gain some insight into the workings of the Church and try to imprison me or bind me in someway.

"Nothing. I'm running out of options Johnny; I don't know where else to look. My knowledge of religious history was never much to look at, anyway…"

"Huh, huh. You know what I'm thinking?" the little guy asked. I say little guy in a kind of moronic way, perhaps: up until some months ago I was as short as him. I appear to have hit a growth spurt of some kind, seeing as I've been getting taller with each week. I'm taller than Lavi! "Maybe you should try to talk with Bookman. In a secluded kind of way. Explain him what you want and why and maybe the old guy will help you."

"I don't know…" I hesitate a lot when it comes to let people inside my personal space, be it physical like my room or psychological like this particular issue. Maybe it has to do with my lonely infancy.

"I think it is for the best. What do you have to lose? The worst that can happen is you receiving a 'No'. But then again we have nothing to stand on as we are now. And I'm sure old man will not tell anyone if you ask him to keep secret." (sometimes, in his hurry to talk, Johnny swallows entire words in the middle of the speech. This is just another of the things I'll have to work on with my Gentleman's class)

"Maybe… Alright. I'll talk to the old man, when I get the chance." I decided.

"You do that!" Johnny said, turning around and making a move to attempt to raise the books once again. He wobbled dangerously and I walked quickly around the table to grab a few of them as well, splitting the tower into more even proportions.

"I'll help you with this."

Johnny gave me a tired nod. "Thanks. I have to take this to the basement. It's two flights of stairs: I don't know if I'd have managed it on my own."

I grunted in answer as I lifted my pile. Once the books were secure in my arms I followed Johnny out of the library, leaving my own books scattered around the place I had been sitting on.

People were starting to come to their senses. We get up kind of early, compared to normal folk's habits. We never know when we might be sent to the other side of the world for investigating some strange occurrence or retrieving a confirmed Innocence. Time is always against us. The Earl can move much more quickly than us. Even not counting their own Ark, because the bastard did build another when we stol- retrieved the original, he just has so many Akuma scattered around the globe that he practically doesn't need to move a finger in order to catch and destroy Innocence before we can get to it. Still, the halls weren't too crowded, yet. Which was a good thing given that, even with me helping Johnny, our respective stacks of books were so big that moving around became mostly guesswork.

I managed to catch up with him about halfway down the stairs to the ground level and asked, "What do you guys need all this for, anyway?"

Johnny huffed and puffed for a couple of paces more, before answering. Like a said, he isn't much of an athlete.

"Central is dissatisfied with us, right now. Komui hasn't sent the administrative reports as often as they'd like and now were stuck with revising all the stuff that as happened for the last five years. You're holding the last two years."

I grimaced. Central was very strict about managing the Order and Komui's lax attitude towards paperwork was well known. As long as the missions were completed and, in the Chief's opinion – and mine as well – no one got hurt in the process, everything was fine. What importance were a few reports describing the techniques and the situation encountered? Well… I suppose I can understand: it is important for us to relay our experiences so that the fight against the Earl can be better conducted. We have to know our enemies to be able to outwit them. Maybe that's exactly why dear Inspector Revellier has allowed you to continue living as an Exorcist… the thought jumped into my mind without a single warning, delivered in the scanting tone I used to use before I met Mana. I mulled over it almost the entirety of the way left to walk.

It was only when we were arriving at the Research Institute that I asked Johnny,

"How come you're carrying files and books worth three years and my stack is still higher than yours?"

"That's because you joined the Order on the years covered by your books. Stuff got much more… interesting since you've been around!" he said cheekily.

I scowled.

A.N.: Just a little something that jumped me while working. I'll update my other stories, eventually - don't worry I haven't abandoned them. I just needed an outlet from my regular writing materials, if you know what I mean. D. Gray-man is my favourite manga so I was afraid of screwing up with the world. This story is something that has been on my mind before I started the Nightshade, but I didn't feel comfortable with the rules of Allen's universe before. Anyway, here it is now. Tell me what you think.